Yangshuo - aka, A Biker's Paradise

Arrival in Yangshuo was rather amusing. I spent the previous night in a sleeper bus talking with some of the locals who were heading home from Guangzhou. One of the girls (guys in China almost never can/want to speak english) was the most capable of carrying on a conversation with me, during half of which I spoke Hanyu, the other half English. This way, both of us got a bit of verbal excercise. It seemed to be that she was sharing a 'bed' (tiny sleeping pad) with a woman who was either her mother, or older sister (probably the latter). Anyhow, I was invited to their house, but although I would have loved to visit, the several kilometers between the hostel and the house, plus it's rather inconvenient direction from the city meant that in the two days I had in Yangshuo I didn't make it over there to visit. This is also because on the second day I had to go to the train station in Guilin (again, with another friend that I met the night before). We had to buy the ticket and try to meet the other guys we had been hanging out with the night before, then pick up her luggage in Guilin. By the time the bus returned, it was dinner time. So, my two days turned into one and a half, though I must say that I can't complain, seeing as I met a great number of people there that I will enjoy keeping in touch with. Anthony was a student who worked there, who had come from Pheonix City (I can't remember the Hanyu), and Reila was a visitor for the summer from a city near Hangzhou (south of Shanghai). There was also a guy from Australia (Alex), and a guy from England (Simon), who had great fun with us. My first night in Yangshuo we stopped by a little store and bought some refreshments, then headed down to the waterfront: a beautiful stone terrace, with candle-lit tables, coupled with a light-show on the opposite side of the river. Anyhow, I will miss the place.

So far as the sights go - Yangshuo takes the cake. I biked about 40k that first day, first past the Moon Hill/Mountain, then to a little town to the south, and finally cutting through the countryside on a dirt road to the water cave.

Now for the touristy part. The water cave is so popular with tourists that they have people everywhere trying to get you to go. Added to this is the supposedly large number of 'fake' water caves, for which there are signs everywhere. I was even stopped by an extremely diminutive old woman who was essentially the proprietor of a scam to get tourists to pay her for the cave entrance. Midway through the speech she was giving me (which I had no intention of following), a truck pulled up and some younger chinese folk inquired as to what was happening. I thanked them, given that they had just provided me with an escape route, then pedalled off toward what I hoped was the real thing. This involved considerably more biking than I assumed it would, but I'm not complaining, because it was through some incredibly beautiful country. I think that my favorite moment in all of my time in China was right there, at the top of the hill just before I descended toward the water cave.

I had been biking for twenty minutes at a good speed from the last building I saw, when I began to enter a small village. Here, people harvested crops, worked in the streets, and took their time with life. I was an anomaly, perhaps more so than elsewhere in China, but not in such a way that I didn't feel welcome. I enjoyed the new sights, and as I left the village, I wondered how many of these there were in the area. No sooner than I entered the town, I had left it. And with the rather scorching heat, and the 30 degree ascent ahead of me, I wasn't thinking about quiet towns anymore; I was thinking: why, sun, must you be so intent on baking me alive? A car passed me, and I envyed the air-conditioned atmosphere that the riders must have been enjoying. I decided I would prove my choice of self-propulsion to be superior, and biked my butt off to the top of the hill. This was one of those moments when I just knew I had made a good choice. I crested the top after the car, head down, and sweaty, and then took a quick glance up ahead to check for more cars. What I got instead was a valley worthy of a fairly tale. Down below were fertile fields, unmarred by modern construction, ringed by incredibly steep green slopes. I just sat there for a while taking in the view.

Then, it was time to go to the Water Cave. The descent was very nice, no pedalling needed, and took me right to the entrance of the cave. This was of course flanked by merchants of food, sandals and ice-cream. I headed over to the ticket 'office' and quickly discovered that there weren't any prices (this means bargaining). I was quotes 175 for the full tour, and 120 for half. This was reduced by a full 55 after a word or two, and then down to 90 for the full tour (I should have kept going). Anyhow, I soon learned that the 'guides' know english only by wrote. They were capable of heavily accented descriptions, but the funny part was that they then started talking to each other in Hanyu. This opened a window for me. I became the unofficial translator, and with some difficulty, I told the Israeli couple what the guides were trying to say. I enjoyed a few conversations as we headed deeper into the cave, along with some more lengthy discussions of our two languages. One thing that I think is absolutely fantastic about China: not so many rules and guidelines. We were allowed to climb up the side of the cave to an overhang complete with little pools of water and some stalagmites. At the end of the tour there was even a swimming pool, though I lacked the clothes to participate (actually, no one swam). This was, I think, a better alternative to the mud-bath halfway down the cave, complete with a little digital picture station. One way or another though, the water cave added up to be fairly impressive, worth the time, and probably the most interesting 'tourist' destination in Yangshuo that I saw.

The next day was spent doing two things: taking care of the extreme sunburn on my legs, and buying a ticket to Xi'an, leaving the following evening for a 27 hour ride.